Before The Foundation…

“For He was foreknown before the foundation of the world, but has appeared in these last times for the sake of you who through Him are believers in God, who raised Him from the dead and gave Him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God.” 1 Peter 20-21

After writing and assuring his readers that they are of precious value in respect to the price paid for them, Peter continues to instruct us about just who the Precious Price is. He was known before the “laying down” of the cosmos. That is the literal rendering. The term used here for “foundation” has the sense of laying down a foundation prior to building anything. It is a term trying to convey an understanding to us that is hard to grasp.

We are creatures of thinking in “beginnings” and “ends.” But when it comes to “thinking with Him,” we must lay all such aside and become willing to embrace His mind. That means that our Lord existed always and what He was to become and to do was known all about prior to anything becoming visible – whenever that was. The same understanding (and Greek word “katabole”) is found in Ephesians 1:3-4, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world,….” So in Ephesians this word and concept of existing prior to the plans for the creation were laid down is applied to you and to me. (I am reminded of the phrase in 1 John 4:17, “…because as He is, so also are we in this world.”) Our identity in Him precedes creation.

Such thinking about Him and about us, produces “knots in my brain,” as one of my teaching associates says. It lifts us up beyond the normal into the realm of the Spirit where we begin to see and treasure all that has been done for us and with us. Our linear thinking just does not work here. Instead we see the cyclical thinking of our Father. (See Isaiah 55:8-11) This is where we are drawn as we think with Him and open our spirits in His Spirit to see as He sees.

His appearing here was for us. So we who believe (action motivated by trust based in confidence) that God raised Him from the dead and now He sits in glory – so our faith and our expectation are in God and not in ourselves, our plans, our loved ones, our friends, our circumstances – none of what is here. But we have been empowered to release into what is eternal and to take all our expectation from that realm.

Lord, thank you! I have to think quietly for a while now. Bless all who read and ponder. Such is our heritage and our empowerment.